Measuring So People Matter

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Forward

The best marketing minds understand, just as Barack Obama understands, that when people feel powerless, no illusion is so alluring as that we matter.

Catherine Blyth, Feb 19, 2009, 8:41 a.m., on blog, “as seen in the Spectator.”

Oh irony: clicking on Spectator (on her blog page) leads to a Spectator page which says two things: “Sorry—page not found” and “Check out the latest opinion on Coffee House and add your voice.” Well, the only voice I hear is someone telling me Britain has 60,000,000 people—that’s an awfully big coffee shop.

Measuring

Hurray! Once again it’s been another 25 weeks, like finishing another project, because I have filled up another web administrator’s Page: Each Page is set for 25 topic lines, for 25 posts.

They say the last stage of any project in real life, or in Management 101, is summing up the lessons learned: Some folks would insist only the measurable lessons count. My big lesson for my Page isn’t measurable… But before I talk about my own learning, I would like to talk of other bloggers, and folks in the greater world, and what they measure.

Down in the blogging world

As I’ve noted before, the blogging gold rush fever is over, with many blogs now totaling up fewer page hits than they once totaled up in just comments alone. Back in the day, despite the mathematical odds, people craving high hit counts were rushing and frantic, skimming half-blind in their hopes of being noticed and loved and heard. Yes, folks will always have such human yearnings; I’m sure this mistake will repeat again when new technology comes along—we don’t learn from history.

What bloggers could have remembered is: The numbers! Even in a small town, in a little town hall meeting, most of us will sit quietly. In their yearning to matter, and their rush for great big hit counts, bloggers forgot this.

A trick I got from President Obama's mentor, community organizer Saul Alinsky, is to “act locally” while having a blurred vision of people around me working and voting for a better world: I know I matter to my little peer group, as other citizens count to their peer group. All of our efforts and all of our votes add up to our democracy. Alinsky’s trick requires a little abstract thinking, which may be a little unreasonable, but still, it’s less unreasonable than believing “people globally” are reading my blog.

Alinsky’s trick is better for me than thinking, “Hey, cleaning up litter in this little corner park won’t change the mess in the whole city so forget it—I quit!” Or thinking that if I can’t have my voice be heard, really heard, written in glowing letters on the stadium jumbotron, then I’ll get all huffy. As society gets more affluent, I still remember the metaphor of the spoiled kid with the only ball and bat on the block. If he didn’t get his own way he would get huffy and say, “I’ll just take my ball and bat and go home.” That won’t be me.

Up in the greater world

‘You manage what you measure’ goes a slogan. Careful with this one. A conscientious computer guy, web essayist Paul Graham, was working on making the best product he could, and then he got some shares in the stock. You can measure stock price. To his surprise, he found himself evaluating everything, and making his decisions, by how it would affect the stock, not by how it would help the product.

And of course, for another time and space, we all know how the counter-insurgency efforts in Vietnam avoided the main war by simply killing Vietcong, focusing on body counts and other measurable things, things that often impelled Vietnamese into communism, away from democracy. (Like in colonial New England where the English troops “won” a riot by protecting themselves with gunfire, but at the cost of a few dead colonists—causing a few hundred new recruits for the revolution)

Significantly, the troops in Nam on the ground, gazing through barbed wire, called Winning the Hearts and Minds “the other war.” Regrettably, I am not convinced that at the end of Vietnam we summed up and learned any lessons, not when occupied Iraq was run, yet again, by the armed forces and the embassy. Instead, rebuilding in Iraq should have been coordinated, and democracy taught, by the State Department. By relying once again on the warrior culture and the embassy, I think the U.S. goal of democracy-teaching, amidst nation-building, was utterly doomed in advance.

And of course the War on Drugs is repeating, point by point, the long sorry list of lessons not-learned in Nam, repeating the farce. Utterly doomed, then, to failure. Maybe the real farce is honest people against drugs saying, “What list?” Or even worse, “I thought the only thing we learned from Vietnam was not to get involved in any former French colony in Southeast Asia.” But hey, let’s not get too grim and humorless about our inability to learn from history. Let's laugh. After all, I’m sure Voltaire would react to our folly by laughing long and loud, as his eyes squeezed out tears...

… Only a few years ago, back in the day, bloggers tried to feel good from their nice measurable hit counts. The “summing up,” as discussed in panels at blogger conferences, was for learning how to “increase traffic.” But the best things in life, besides being free, are things that can’t be measured. Not like traffic. Better to simply reach for abstractions like fun and excellence, and let the traffic roam where it will.

Recently on my blog site

Measurable: Good news for my fans: page views are up. That’s likely to be a coincidence. Clicks to see “full profile” are really up. That’s unlikely to be a coincidence. I guess I should be happy. Best of all, I suppose, the blog fever has passed, and yet my hit counts haven’t fallen off. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.

In the “about me” I say, “It’s OK to comment on my older posts.” And now someone is doing so, and I am answering, and that’s nice.

During this Page I have acquired a reader moved to comment; she likes human growth pieces: Call her my “stock price.” It becomes likely, then, I shall do more human potential essays, and that’s fine by me.

Not measurable: I’ve learned the Japanese, with their old civilization, have the concept “Way,” called do, as in Karate-do, “Way of the empty hand.” (Incidentally, Karate-do is a martial art, not a sport like boxing) They also have a Way of the tea ceremony, and other “Ways” too. I doubt that any wise old crone, not famous, not known beyond her peers, would tell you precisely why she practices the tea ceremony or tai chi, but she knows it’s meaningful. In my silicon world of silly screens my prose can be my practice, my Way, my tai chi—if, and only if, I focus. It wouldn’t be the same if I languidly typed with a limp wrist, escaping into writing as a distraction.

Leisure pursuits, measured or not, can feel as meaningful as “real work.” Hence a practical, work ethic fellow like business guru Peter Drucker could become an expert on Japanese art, and be published (co-author) on it; Sir Winston Churchill could become an expert painter, and be published on painting. I have seen one of his pieces hanging at Government House in Edmonton. Churchill’s prose, of course, is classic, well worth studying by students of composition—as I have.

It’s nothing magic, these two men and the crone are all mortal: Everyone can learn to focus on skills and interests just as they do. Me too. I can’t measure, and I can’t prove, the value of practicing a Way of life. I can only say I mean to keep writing and blogging, without statistics. That’s my lesson from these last 25 posts.    

Sean Crawford

Calgary

November

2014

A Note on Blogs  

As you can see from old blogs, immortal in cyberspace, blogs were also trying to have a sense of community through comments. Some current blogs have this, with comments from decent readers, not skimmers. 

Related essays

~One of my top ten posts by hit count, A Young Girl’s Guide to Wars and Drugs (comparing two war failures) was posted March 2013… Incidentally, while readers seldom click on “like,” a post two weeks past it, also in March, has two “likes,” Men’s Underwear and Symbolism.

~My last summing up for a 25-blog Page was posted as Acid Blog, Stupid University May 2014.

~ Under the label Iraq, I have three essays, the last includes the concept of reality checks.

Me, Growing Up

 On a personal note, for readers who get this far down the page, I guess I should grow up. Everybody else lost their innocence in Vietnam, and I should too, and stop innocently wanting the agony and casualties to mean any lessons are learned. There's no silver lining, their lives were just wasted.

I’m sorry, Mom.